She reached for him, then, fingers fumbling with the front of his shirt.
"They're snaps," Taggart said. "Not buttons."
She laughed a little unsteadily. "You'd think I could see that." She undid them carefully, one by one, until his chest was exposed, and she ran her hands over it—over him—and it was his turn to tremble.
He lay back and she came with him, settling alongside him so that they lay knee to knee, nose to nose. They kissed, nipped, nibbled. He reached around and undid the clasp of her bra, then eased it off, and let the soft weight of her breasts spill into his hands. Then he bent his head and touched them each in turn with his tongue.
"Taggart!" Felicity wriggled against him, hooking an ankle over his calf and pressing against him.
"Mmm?" He didn't raise his head, but his hands kept working—though it didn't seem much like work, this caressing, touching, undoing the fastener of her slacks and sliding the zipper down. With care he hooked his thumbs in the waistband and eased them down over her hips, past her bottom. He did pull away long enough to tug them off and send them following the top she'd worn. And then he looked back at Felicity as she lay on the bed beside him.
She was everything a man could ask for. Warm and willing. Eager and waiting. Just for him.
She smiled and held out her arms to him. He shucked his boots and jeans and briefs, skinned off the scrap of peach-colored lace that was the last thing Felicity wore, and then he settled between her legs, trembling with anticipation.
Slow, he told himself. Take it slow. There might have been an excuse for last time. There was none now. This time was for her. For both of them.
It was a dance of touch and taste. His fingers and hers. His lips and hers. Gentle brushing. Soft nibbling. Here. There. Everywhere. Circles and spirals, loops and lines. Focusing. Centering. Closer. Closer.
"Now," Felicity whispered. And she took him in. Loved him. Let him love her. The world splintered around them, and reality—and Felicity—brought him the satisfaction that dreams never had.
It was everything he wanted. It was more than he'd hoped. It was everything he feared. It was more than he dared.
He'd sought this once and thought he'd found it with Julie. He'd been wrong. Dead wrong. He'd consoled himself after she'd left him, telling himself it didn't matter because such joy didn't exist. For eight years he'd believed that.
Wrong again.
Eyes shut, he lay perfectly still. Felicity's fingers were gripping him hard, holding him close.
"I love you," she whispered.
Taggart felt his insides knot. Love you. Love you. The words echoed in his head. They were so easily spoken. So lightly said. Julie had said them. Then he'd believed. In the words. In Julie.
In himself.
And now?
Felicity isn't Julie, he told himself. But Felicity wasn't the problem. The problem, as Julie had been all too quick to point out, was him. A tight, painful sound filled the back of his throat.
Felicity's fingers stroked his back. Her lips teased the curve of his ear. "Taggart?" she said. Her breath tickled his cheek.
He opened his eyes and slowly, very slowly, eased himself away from her, bracing above her on his hands, looking down into her face. She was smiling. An angel's smile. Something else he wasn't sure he believed in.
"Don't," he said, looking away, rolling off.
Her smile faded. "Don't? Don't what?"
"Don't love me." He shook his head, then turned his head to look over at her, to try to meet her gaze. It wasn't easy. She looked wounded. Eyes wide, hurt. No surprise. He was good at wounding people. The knowledge stiffened his faltering resolve.
"I don't want love," he told her raggedly.
Felicity didn't reply. She turned onto her side to face him, her expression serious, and she studied him with her big, wide eyes. She was close enough that he could feel her breath touch his cheek, but she didn't touch him.
"What do you want?" she asked slowly, almost gently.
He struggled to come up with the words. "Just … what we had. Closeness. A few hours— A little—" He broke off, unable to form them. It sounded crass when he tried to put it into words.
"A little sex?"
He scowled. "That's crude."
"You're the one who is saying it has nothing to do with love!" There was pain in her voice now, and the very sound of it hurt him, too.
Taggart moved away and sat on the side of the bed. "Hell." He rubbed his hands through his hair, then dragged them down his face. "I didn't want this. I never meant— I should never have come."
Felicity sat up, too, shoving herself against the headboard, grabbing the blanket and pulling it around her. "No, you shouldn't have! Not if that's all you're here for. What was tonight, Taggart? Payback time? A return engagement to make up for whatever inadequacies you thought you displayed last weekend in the truck?"
Her words knifed him. He felt the color rise in his cheeks. He didn't answer. He didn't have to. His silence was condemnation enough.
Felicity made a strangled sound and leapt off the bed. "Well, thank you very much. Consider us even, then, won't you? Now, get dressed and get the hell out!" She was scooping up his jeans and shirt and throwing them at him as she spoke.
He caught them. His boots came sailing, too, one after the other. He caught the first. The second narrowly missed his head. "I didn't mean— I never intended—!" But once more he couldn't find the right words.
"No," Felicity said bitterly. "I can see that now. You never intended anything more than a roll in the sack, did you? Well, you got it. I trust you will keep the news of it to yourself," she said, her lips twisting as she spoke. "Not only would it not do my professional reputation any good, it will prove better than anything that I'm a fool!"
She turned then and darted from the room. Taggart stared after her, feeling like he'd been gored. He heard the door to the bathroom slam. He stood irresolute, for a long moment, wanting to go after her, wanting to tell her it was all a mistake, wanting to say that he loved her, wanted to marry her and live happily ever after.
But this was reality. He got up and started to dress.
She hadn't come out by the time he'd finished. He hesitated outside the bathroom door, then tapped lightly. "Felicity?"
The door opened. She was dressed, too, in jeans and a black shirt. It washed out her complexion, made her look pale and ashen. The glow of their lovemaking was already gone from her face. She didn't speak.
He pressed his lips together. "I wish…" he began, then shook his head. "Never mind. I'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt you. Really. And I'd only hurt you more if I—" He stopped again.
She stared at him, unblinking.
There was no point. "I'll go." He turned, then hesitated. "Thanks."
"For the sex?" Felicity said bitterly.
"No, damn it! Not the sex. Not … just the sex. For everything. Just … being you." He swallowed. "I'm sorry. I'll go. I just want… Oh, hell, if—if there's ever anything I can do for you…"
She gaped at him.
"Never mind." He shrugged awkwardly, then, crushing his hat in his hands, he stumbled down the stairs.
* * *
She was a fool.
She was mortified. Horrified.
At her gullibility. At the wanton way she'd behaved. Every time she thought about it, about him—about loving Taggart Jones—her cheeks flamed, her gut twisted, she felt ill.
She wanted to pack up and run back to California, Iowa, her mother's womb! Anywhere far enough to get away from the confusing, taunting memories that haunted her.
But there was nowhere she could go to run away from herself.
Or from the love she still felt.
Perverse as it was, she found that when the mortification began to fade, when the horror subsided, when the anger began to seep out of her bones, the love—heaven help her—was still there.
She didn't know what to do about it. About him. There was nothing she could do, she told herself
. He'd made his decision; he'd shoved her—and her love—out of his life.
"Chicken," she called him fifty times a day. "Coward."
But she never had a chance to say it to his face.
And then five days after Taggart had turned her life upside down, Orrin Bacon called.
"Ms. Albright? Been waiting to hear from you," he drawled. "About our little deal."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Bacon. I've been … distracted."
"Maybe you'd rather not do it. Lot of pressure on you. I'd understand if you were to change your mind."
But he wouldn't change his, Felicity knew. "I haven't changed my mind, Mr. Bacon. I'll do it."
"Do what, Ms. Albright? What exactly is this new trick you're going to learn?" He was chuckling. She could hear him.
Another day she wouldn't have done it. Another minute and she might have been more level-headed. But right now Felicity was reckless with need and anger and sorrow and longing. "I'm going to learn to ride a bull."
* * *
"Don't talk nonsense."
Just hearing her voice on the phone had stunned him. For a moment the words made no sense. When they did, his anger flared. He'd spent the last few days—ever since he'd walked out of her house—trying to put her out of his mind, trying to convince himself he'd done the right thing getting her out of his life.
And now here she was back in it again.
And spouting garbage about wanting to ride a bull?
"You've had women in your classes before," she reminded him. He cursed the fact that he'd told her so.
"Cowgirls," he said dampeningly. "Women who knew one end of a horse from the other."
"I know one end rather well, thanks to my acquaintance with you. Besides, this isn't about horses. It's about bulls."
He swore under his breath. "What's all this about, Felicity?"
"Orrin Bacon. I made a deal with him." She sounded downright breezy as she babbled on about old dogs and new tricks and him agreeing to let her teach Sam her way if she'd learn to do something, too. "So I said I'd learn to ride a bull." She made it sound like she'd agreed to learn to knit!
"That's idiotic!" Taggart paced as far across his living room as the phone cord would allow, then stomped back the other way again.
"It's necessary," Felicity countered. "So when's your next school?"
"Saturday. It's full."
"You can make room. Becky says you often do."
"You asked Becky?"
He and his daughter weren't on the best of terms. Ever since he'd told her flat out that he wasn't interested in her teacher, that she needed to keep her mind on her schoolwork and out of his love life, she had been talking to him in monosyllables—if at all.
"I did not ask Becky. She volunteered the information some time ago," Felicity said stiffly. "She says you make room for friends. And while I may not qualify as a 'friend' "—her voice twisted both the word and his gut "—I think you might allow a mere acquaintance in, especially your daughter's teacher."
"Damn it, of course you're a friend!"
"Am I?" Her tone was cool. "And here I thought I was just a roll in the hay."
He gritted his teeth. "You were never…! Look, Felicity. There must be a thousand other things you could learn to do!"
"Of course there are, but this is the one I've agreed to. And I am not a chicken. What's the matter, Taggart? Are you?" she taunted.
"Damn you. No!"
"Well, then—?"
He raked a hand through his hair, then tugged it hard. "Oh, hell. All right."
* * *
She must have been out of her mind. That was all Felicity could think when she got up Saturday morning and realized that in an hour and a half she would have to turn up at bull-riding school.
She could call and back out, of course. It was what Orrin Bacon wanted. It was what Taggart wanted. In one sense, it was what she wanted. But she wouldn't do it.
Because more than she wanted to back out, she wanted to teach Sam the way he ought to be taught.
And because she wanted one last chance to see Taggart Jones—and make him see her. She'd felt this kind of determination only once before, when she had to convince her parents of her love for Dirk. It hadn't been easy. But she'd never regretted it.
She took Dirk's picture out of the drawer and looked at him. She hadn't been this scared since the day they got married. That had been a watershed moment, too. Everything in her life afterward had come as a result of that choice.
So it would—for better or worse—this weekend.
She brushed her thumb over Dirk's face. "Wish me luck," she whispered, and gave him a smile.
As always, he smiled back at her.
The cowboy hats were milling around when she got there. This time, though, she was one of them, wearing a new one she'd bought just yesterday. Tess Tanner had lent her some chaps, and old Mr. Eberhardt had come up with some spurs.
"Used to ride a few bulls myself in th'old days," he'd told her last night when he brought them over, folded inside the Chronicle.
Now she carried them to Taggart. The minute he looked up and saw her standing in front of him, all conversation in the room stopped. Did they all know? What did they all know? she wondered. Felicity ran her tongue along her upper lip, then held out the spurs. "Are these all right?"
Taggart took them from her. There was a low murmur of wonder that swept among the cowboys in the room. Taggart spun the rowels. He took his file and dulled one rowel, then another, carefully, deliberately. Then he handed them back to her.
Their eyes met. Felicity held herself very still.
"All right," Taggart said, eyes probing, querying, then finally sliding away. "Let's get started."
* * *
Eleven
« ^
He'd hoped she wouldn't show up. He'd known, of course, that she would.
It was the sort of woman Felicity Albright was. Stubborn, determined, committed. Crazy.
The same adjectives people had used to describe him when he resolved to keep Becky with him and take her down the road.
"A baby in a truck? You? By yourself?" He couldn't count the number of people who had gaped and shaken their heads at his foolishness. His own parents had told him he'd be better off to leave Becky with them. But he'd disagreed.
"A kid needs parents," he told them. "You were there for me when I was growing up. I'm gonna be there for Becky."
It hadn't been easy. Without Noah's and other cowboys' help at times, he couldn't have done it and he knew it. But he was glad he had. He had a relationship with his daughter that he never would have had if he'd left her with his folks.
She probably wouldn't have felt free to try to set him up with her teacher, for example. And he wouldn't be in the mess he was in right now.
How the hell was he going to teach Felicity—or anyone else, for that matter—how to ride a bull? He couldn't even think straight, let alone talk coherently.
The cowboys were shifting around restlessly in their chairs, waiting for him to get started. Felicity was watching him, too.
Just then, the door to the classroom opened and Becky poked her head in. "Daddy? You got a phone call at the house."
Taggart welcomed the reprieve. "Be right back," he said. With any luck she'd have come to her senses and left by the time he returned. He went up to the house.
"Taggart? Orrin here. She show up?" There was a note of mocking doubt in Orrin Bacon's tone.
No need to ask who he was talking about. Taggart straightened. His fingers tightened on the phone. "She showed up."
There was a second's surprised silence. Then, "With spurs on, no doubt." Orrin laughed.
"She has a pair, yes."
"Damn fool woman. You don't go lettin' her get hurt now."
"Injury is always a possibility in bull riding, Orrin. You know that."
"You ain't gonna let her on one, are you?"
"She has as much right to take my class as anyone else."
"But—but sh
e's a woman!"
"I've noticed."
"She could get killed!"
"I hope not. I'll do my best to teach her how to be careful as well as how to ride. Why don't you come out and watch?"
"Watch? But what if—"
"I have to go, Orrin. I have a class waiting."
"But—!"
"Fish or cut bait, Orrin." Taggart banged down the phone and stalked back to the classroom, his mind whirling. He hadn't done much for Felicity Albright besides make her miserable since the day they'd met. He'd thought he owed her a night of loving. He'd been wrong. He didn't think he was wrong when he realized that he owed her this.
He walked straight over to her. "That was Orrin … checking up on you."
She looked nervous. "What'd you tell him?"
Taggart smiled grimly. "I told him to come out and watch you ride a bull."
* * *
It was the moment of truth.
Felicity stood on the metal rail of the chute and watched as the bulls were put in. In her mind she juggled a dozen thoughts, a thousand words. Put your feet even with the rope line when you start. Stay perpendicular to the back of the bull. Keep your body right over your feet. Angle your toes out. Pivot at the ankle, not the knee. Hug the bull with your calves. Keep your chin level. Don't drop your head. Be cool.
Only the last seemed to penetrate the fog swirling through her head. Cool, she told herself. Be cool. Be calm. Be collected. Don't think. Just react.
As if she'd be able to think, Felicity thought. The bull in the chute ahead of hers clanked loudly against the metal rails, blowing snot back over his shoulder and making the bell on his flank strap clatter as he kicked.
Tommy Hill, the high school boy slated for the ride, braced above the bull, hauled up on his rope once more, then lowered himself onto the bull's back. Half a dozen cowboys had already ridden—the advanced group, according to Taggart.
Now it was the beginners' turn.
Taggart, standing in the arena next to Jed McCall, who was going to pull the gate, was talking to Tommy as he eased down onto the bull's back. "Nice and slow," he was saying, his voice soothing. "Let him get used to you."
Felicity saw Tommy's hat bob once. The bull kicked against the metal. The railings clanged loudly once more. Tommy stood straight up again.
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